Research Briefing Nº 19

Playing by ear in the instrumental lesson: an approach based on popular musicians’ informal learning practices

This research looks at how musical practices and techniques that involve can enhance the teaching and learning of in one-to-one instrumental tuition.

Key words: music; playing by ear; instrumental tuition; informal learning

Key findings

 79.3% of students found the project enjoyable or very enjoyable.

 71.5% reported that they had never done any playing by ear of this kind before.

 At the end of the project, 80.3% thought playing by ear was ‘important’ or ‘very important’ and 79.8% said they would like to learn to play by ear as well as by notation.

 Teachers felt they were introduced to new, rewarding and useful musical skills that they would not otherwise have come across: 85% felt they had learnt useful teaching skills, including new perspectives concerning how their students learn; 87% agreed or strongly agreed that the project would influence the way they teach in the future; and 90.7% stated they would continue to use the strategies in a general way after the project had finished.

 93% of teachers felt their students had benefitted from playing by ear, with 74% stating their students’ general musicianship had improved, and many witnessing increases in students’ confidence.

 Four key spontaneous musical ‘learning styles’ appeared to emerge amongst students.

1 © IOE 2013

What we did under the auspices of the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB); one at The project was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn the Royal Northern College of Music; one Foundation. It involved a 12-month pilot study in at Croydon Music Service; and one at the academic year 2008-09 and a 12-month main Forest Hill School, London; 100% of study in 2011-12. participants said they would recommend the induction to others. 54 of them elected The informal learning practices of popular to be part of the research and provide us musicians are simple, effective, flexible and with data over a period of 10 lessons. enjoyable. Shared in different ways by folk, jazz  325 students participated in one-to-one and many other musicians, they can lead to high lessons, plus over 100 in 4 extra-curricular levels of skill-development, particularly in the ensembles, 6 guitar groups and 1 choir. In realms of playing by ear. Furthermore, many of addition, we ran a day for 9 blind and the skills involved can be just as relevant to partially-sighted children. The students classical music as to any other musical style. The were mostly aged 8-16, but the full range Ear Playing Project (EPP) was based on a was from 5-63 years, with an average age distillation and adaption of popular musicians' of 14. learning practices, designed for instrumental  We collected data through 114 lesson settings at any level. In particular, it focused on observations involving 95 pupils and 17 one of the central ways in which popular teachers, mainly in one-to-one lessons; musicians first acquire their skills – that is, observations of 4 band rehearsals and 6 listening to a recording, picking out a part, and guitar groups; 13 teacher interviews and attempting to play it by ear, usually with little or no 42 student interviews; 193 student formal guidance. The approach builds on the questionnaires and 54 teacher highly successful classroom project created by questionnaires; e-mails and blog Professor Lucy Green within Musical Futures comments. We collected audio recordings of 75 students’ first attempts at the task, and conducted a matched-pairs How we did it experiment with 36 students. Data were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively.  144 teachers attended an induction day: six sessions were held at the IOE; one

Further information

Green, L. (2014). Hear, Listen, Play! How to free your students’ aural, improvisation and performance skills. Oxford University Press

Baker, D. (2013). ‘Music, informal learning and the instrumental lesson: teacher and student evaluations of the Ear Playing Project (EPP)’ In Mary Stakelum (ed.) Developing the Musician pp 291-310. London: Ashgate Press

Baker, D. and Green, L. (2013). “Ear playing and aural development: Results from a ‘case-control’ experiment”. Research Studies in , 35, no. 2

Green, L. (2012). ‘Musical “learning styles” and “learning strategies” in the instrumental lesson: some emergent findings from a pilot study’. Psychology of Music, Vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 42-65

Varvarigou, M. and Green, L. In press. ‘The Ear-playing Project: musical learning styles and strategies in the instrumental music lesson: main study findings’

Contact

Principal Investigator: Professor Lucy Green, Department of Culture, Communication and Media, Institute of Education, University of London 2 Email: [email protected] © IOE 2013 Phone: +44 (0)20 7612 6736 Other team members: Dr. David Baker, (Institute of Education); Dr. Maria Varvarigou, (Canterbury University)